ARES. – “Ἄρης, Greek god of war. For some, the name would mean ‘the destroyer,’ but the etymology is disputed. For the ancients he was Thracian and therefore foreign; for some modern scholars he is a Greek god, while for others he originated in Thrace or Caria. In the Iliad he is the son of Zeus and Dione; he represents savage and irrational warlike fury, the craving for destruction, blood, and slaughter; he is disliked by the gods, despised and hated; the Arcadians shut him up in a bronze jar so that he might not devastate Thessaly. The Homeric portrait also exerted an influence in later times. Only the late Homeric hymn, identifying A. with the planet Mars, makes him a benevolent god, defender of justice. The primitive nature of A. has remained obscured by the warrior god: some have made him a primitive god of vegetation, others of the storm, or a pre-Hellenic chthonic (underground) god corresponding to the Erinyes; indeed, according to a Theban saga, A. would have had Tilphossa, one of the Erinyes, as his wife, and their son would have been the serpent killed by Cadmus. The Arcadian cult of Tegea, where only women sacrificed to him, has been considered ancient. The most common epithet of A. is Enyalios, who perhaps was originally an independent god and was later absorbed by A.
A. is associated with female divinities whom he was considered to have married: Enyo in Thessaly (for some, instead, she was his mother), Aglaurus in Athens, Tilphossa or Aphrodite in Thebes, etc. Perhaps the legend of A.’s love affair with Aphrodite, already mentioned in the Odyssey, arose from the Theban tradition. A. has no votive inscriptions and only exceptionally received offerings; no city considered him its protector, few offered him a cult, and still fewer were those in which he had a temple (Athens, Geronthra), where women could not enter the temple, Dreros, Troezen). As Enyalios he was especially venerated at Sparta. At Rome he was identified with Mars, while Quirinus was recognized in Enyalios. For the ancients A. was an adult, bearded man, covered in heavy armor with helmet, sword, and spear; from the 5th century B.C. onward they represented him as young and naked.